


Clear the Path

by wangler



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Child Abuse, F/M, Implied Incest, M/M, Parent/Child Incest, Spoilers, Underage Sex, Wordcount: 1.000-3.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-26
Updated: 2012-08-26
Packaged: 2017-11-12 22:06:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/496138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wangler/pseuds/wangler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>character study :: Chris Argent is sixteen when he starts calling his father <em>Gerard</em>, instead of Dad.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Clear the Path

Chris Argent is sixteen when he starts calling his father _Gerard_ , instead of Dad.  
  
He’s sixteen when he gets home from school on early dismissal day and hears wet, distressed sounds and takes the stairs slowly, his body alert. He’s a hunter. He knows to listen, to stalk, to avoid a reckless approach toward danger. With each careful step, his stomach tightens. That doesn’t sound like a struggle. It sounds like.  
  
It sounds like.  
  
Kate.  
  
And Kate’s bedroom door is open, and she's on her back on a blue towel on the bed, her skin shower-fresh and bright. _She has boobs now_ , Chris thinks, numbly. It’s been years since they were both little and took baths together, years since he saw her body.  
  
She has her fingers in the towel, gripping it hard like she’s in pain, and her back is arched like a bow, and she’s—she’s moaning. It’s a soft sound. She’s smiling when she gasps.  
  
Her knees are draped over their dad’s shoulders.  
  
Chris stands in the doorway and watches his dad kiss the inside of Kate’s pale thigh.  
  
“Good girl,” Gerard says. “That’s my good girl.” Gerard's gaze darts to the side and locks on Chris in the doorway as he opens his mouth and puts it on Kate’s—between her legs.  
  
Chris startles back. He runs.  
  
***  
  
Chris Argent is eighteen when his little sister locks his bedroom door behind her and leans against it. She’s woman-shaped now. She wears tight jeans and boots with heels and she curls her hair. She’s soft and wicked.  
  
Their mother had been sharp and severe, but never wicked, never this.  
  
“We’re never going to talk about it, are we?” Kate asks.  
  
Chris is cleaning a gun at his desk and ignores her question. “I’m moving out.”  
  
“Dad’s leaving, you know. Aunt Pat needs him at the Pacific Compound.”  
  
“Gerard asked me to come with him. I’m staying here,” Chris says.  
  
“Is this about your friend?” Kate taps her boot against Chris’s bedroom door. When Chris doesn’t answer, she laughs. “Everyone knew how that story would end, sweetie.”  
  
“Don’t call me that.”  
  
“You’ll take care of me when Dad’s gone, won’t you?”  
  
Chris looks up from the greasy blur at his fingers. “You don’t need anyone to take care of you.”  
  
Kate made her first kill when she was eleven. She refused to bathe for two days because she liked the way the blood looked on her face. Kate knows how to walk silently but never does, because she’d rather call her demons out, gun on her hip, laughter ringing like a funeral toll.  
  
Kate’s been fucking Gerard all year.  
  
“You know what I mean,” she says, pouting. “I don’t want to be alone.”  
  
Chris could have her right now, if he wanted her. She’d come to him, mouth open and hot, and he’d feel her up and maybe they’d even fuck. He’s thought about it, late at night, fevered with want and hate and hurt, ramming his hips into the mattress and crying. He hates Gerard for loving her more, he hates Kate for letting him do it, he hates himself for wanting to be part of what they are.  
  
“You’ll never be alone, Kate,” Chris says.  
  
They’re Argents. They’ll always be embraced by war.  
  
With the gun in his hand, he has a brief, dark impulse to level it toward her. To see the look on her face if he did.  
  
He rests his hand on the gun and says, “Get out.”  
  
***  
  
Chris Argent is twenty-two when he picks Victoria Chase up at the regional airport.  
  
“Mr. Argent,” she says, extending her hand. She’s bone-pale with eyes like glaciers and her fingers are cold and thin and strong in his own.  
  
“Chris is just fine,” he says, nearly stammering. It isn’t because she’s here to audit his armory and evaluate his network of independent hunters. It isn’t even because he can remember seeing her at the summer gathering five years ago, when she wore a white bathing suit and her hair in a long red braid.  
  
It’s because he knows, right then, that he wants to marry Victoria Chase. He wants go on his knees before her.  
  
“Chris it is,” she says, flashing a smile that glints like the blade of a knife.  
  
***  
  
Chris Argent is twenty-five when Victoria gives birth to a wrinkly baby they name Allison, after Victoria’s mother, Alice.  
  
They’re in Portland.  
  
Chris lives for the code, his wife and his daughter.  
  
Gerard is a ghost in the Pacific Northwest. He sends a Christmas card every year, no matter how many times Chris and Victoria move for Victoria’s job.  
  
Kate is a phantom limb in Beacon Hills.  
  
***  
  
Chris Argent is thirty-five when he returns to his home town for a funeral. All but three of the Hales are dead, perished in a fire that only could have been arson. Werewolves don’t leave the stove on. They don’t drop cigarettes onto blankets. They don’t stay in the basement of a burning house.  
  
He goes to Peter first. They were friends once. They even fucked, back when they were teenagers, just enough times that Chris can’t remember every one. Instead, it’s a tapestry of wetness and teeth and the dark, tight parts of a man’s body. It ended when Peter lost a brother and Chris lost a friend and Gerard clapped his son on the shoulder and explained that you always, always put a rabid dog down.  
  
Now Peter is a shell, dead-eyed and ravaged by flames. He isn’t healing. Chris suspects that there’s more at work than burned flesh and lack of oxygen to the brain. But he’s here for a funeral, not an investigation.  
  
Kate embraces him. “Big day,” she says, smiling like it’s Christmas morning. They stand at the edge of the service. It’s a strange memorial, populated by the people of Beacon Hills, all of them crowded around the long row of graves like rubberneckers on the Interstate.  
  
The teenagers—the ones who weren’t home for the fire—stand side by side, wearing matching, blank expressions. Chris wonders if it’s hard for them to contain their animal rage. They're standing before the smaller row of graves. The children. Five of them.  
  
“Laura Hale,” Chris murmurs. “And Darrin?”  
  
“Derek,” Kate says.  
  
“They’re Jonathan’s kids.” Chris only met Peter’s oldest brother once. He was quiet. Somber. A carpenter.  
  
“Chris, they’re werewolves.” Kate takes Chris’s hand. From the outside, it must look like a sign of comfort. He feels her thumb trace warm, slow circles on his palm.  
  
“The Hales didn’t raise killers. They’re children,” Chris says.  
  
Kate squeezes Chris’s hand. “Oh, they’re plenty grown.”  
  
***  
  
Chris Argent is forty-one when he drives a moving truck back to Beacon Hills.  
  
Victoria has long-since retired, but she’s an Argent, and when she serves Chris a heaping spoonful of green bean casserole and says, “We need to go home,” Chris knows exactly what she means.  
  
Argents thrive on top, calling the shots. Laura Hale is dead. If they don’t respond to the activity, someone else will.  
  
It’s an easy move. The park rangers and law enforcement groups and militias in Northern California need weapons. Chris and Victoria buy a house with cash and move in just before the school year begins. Victoria and Allison buy paint samples and streak Allison’s bedroom wall.  
  
Allison is almost seventeen.  
  
Victoria has never been one to hesitate. She asks Chris to send for Kate, and he does. It feels like driving a rusted hook into his ribs. Kate can’t make it from the Interstate to the driveway without firing a gun at a Hale, and looking back, Chris wonders why the pieces never slotted into place.  
  
Maybe—and maybe this is an excuse—he’s too busy watching Kate brush his daughter’s hair, watching her sit on Allison’s bed, listening to her tell Allison how grown up she is, what a woman she’s become.  
  
He can only see this wolf in his midst.  
  
Still, still. When he crouches to plant Kate’s necklace back around her ripped-open throat, he pauses to brush her hair out of her face, to tuck a honey-colored curl behind her ear.  
  
***  
  
Chris Argent is forty-two when his wife dies in his arms.  
  
“She had a history of depression,” he tells the paramedics, and the doctors, and the sheriff’s gentle deputy. When Allison walks into the hospital, shaking her head, telling him _no_ , he can’t say anything. He can’t say anything at all.  
  
“Well done,” Gerard says, when Chris gets home. He claps his son on the shoulder and watches Allison walk up the stairs to her bedroom.  
  
The dishwasher is still full of dirty pans. Chris turns it on and listens to the rhythmic whoosh. They chose the house for the kitchen, for the big island and the generous dining room. Perfect for family meals, Victoria had said, because she may have been severe, but she loved with every breath she took, and she’s not breathing anymore.  
  
Chris moves Victoria’s wool rug downstairs, into the armory in the basement, and paces on it with Allison, trying to remember the things Victoria taught him about connecting with teenagers, about being a parent. They draw coordinates on a map of Beacon Hills. Chris remembers Allison's tiny hand clutching a crayon and trying so hard to draw a straight line.  
  
Allison wears Gerard’s influence like a cloak. Raising a daughter, Chris prepared himself for discussions about safe sex and drugs and her legacy as a leader. He never prepared himself for Gerard becoming more than a check in the mail every December. He feels like he's drowning.  
  
Hunting and hurting, Allison laughs and she’s Kate. She’s Kate and she’s not, not yet, because her grief is still a fire behind her glazed eyes. Grief is love.  
  
Chris lifts his gun. He’ll clear the path. He’ll make her way until she’s ready to follow.  
  
Victoria loved Allison enough to break the code for her. Chris loves Allison enough to honor it.  



End file.
